O sea-starved, hungry sea
by SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: With Aemon Targaryen alive - not well, but alive - in Pentos, and his sister Daella ruling the roost high atop the Eyrie, the fate of House Targaryen may well shift. Especially when little Rhaenys is granted Dragonstone in her father's absence, despite kind Uncle Baelon's best efforts.
1. A thing heroically lost

Blood and saltwater taste much alike, he finds.

He would have died, if not for the hooks the pirates latch through his clothes and his thigh - they slice away his breeches and stitch him closed as soon as he's on deck, and then he is thrown below, and the hold echoes with Vayeles' dying cries.

Aemon's soul feels scorched away, unable to return for the bronze collar clamped so quickly around his neck.

"A princely slave," a pirate grits out in ugly-accented Valyrian, and Aemon spits in his face.

The whip cuts deep into his ribcage, lashing around from behind, and he almost screams.

* * *

Grandmother is the one to tell Rhaenys - Mother has already gone to the sept, fled there to find some peace so that she might face this horror, and Grandfather is already mourning, but Grandmother thinks to come to Rhaenys, alone but for her books.

Corlys brought them for her, from his last journey - even when she was a little girl clamouring at his heels, he always brought her marvellous gifts, but they have become more personal in nature these past moons, since she made it known that she intended to court him, in the Westerosi style rather than the Valyrian - in the Valyrian style, she would have to wait for him to make the first move, and if she did that, she would wait until she was in her grave.

Grandmother takes the book from her hands and sets it carefully aside, showing it as much respect as she would any treasure belonging to Rhaenys' cousins. Her cousins would not return the favour, of course, but that is to be expected.

"The pirates have been driven away from Tarth, little one," Grandmother says, "but Vayeles has been sighted on the eastern reef."

Vayeles hates the water, and would never choose to land anywhere but dry land.

"What of my father?" Rhaenys asks, and Grandmother's fierce eyes are soft.

"Oh, my poor sweetheart," she says, lifting one age-worn hand to Rhaenys' face. "Of your father, we have found no trace."

* * *

Rowing is arduous work, and Aemon is only thankful that he was in such a peak of health before he was collared. Some of his companions are sickly, or old, or frail. Aemon has never been any of those things, stronger than an average man with dragon's blood and dragon's bond bolstering him, and he does his best to offer what strength was once Vayeles' in his soul to his gangmates, who will have no homes to return to if ever they are freed.

A delicate man with the bright golden eyes of the Naathi laughs when Aemon admits that he has a wife and daughter to return to - he is told again and again that if he does free himself, he will return to find his wife remarried and his daughter cast out.

Such a thing will never happen - he will return to Jocelyn, no matter how long it takes, and even if she does remarry for thinking him dead, well, Aemon's father is King, and Dragonstone Rhaenys' inheritance - she cannot be cast out.

And she will have Corlys behind her, the wily snake - he's been making doe eyes at her since the tourney for her eighteenth birthday at the start of the year, and he's a fool if he thinks Aemon and Jocelyn didn't notice. Few have the influence to trouble Corlys, never mind the wealth.

None of his gangmates believe that he is a Prince, of course. They think him some Lysene pretender, or perhaps one of their half-mad bankers, and they humour him through mockery - he is the biggest, the fittest of the galley-slaves, and he is given the first servings of gruel each morning and evening, and the others jape that such is a Prince's right.

He is a Prince. He is the Conqueror's great-grandson, heir to his throne.

He only hopes that he is not heir to his great-grandmother's death.

* * *

Mother refuses to allow them to hold a funeral.

"If Aemon were dead, I would know," she hisses at Grandfather, held back from striking him only by Rhaenys and Boremund together. "I would know, you old fool, just as well as you would know if the Queen were to fall. How dare you wish him away! How dare you!"

Rhaenys cannot help but think that some of them would have dreamt her father's death, if it were coming - some of her aunts, some of her cousins, even she herself, although her dragon-dreams are few and far between.

"He is my son, Jocelyn," Grandfather says, a snarling fury such as Rhaenys has never seen taking over his whole being. "In my heart I yet hope that he lives, just as I hoped that the messengers who found me in Highgarden to tell me that my Aegon had died were liars and rogues, just as I always, always hoped that my brother was not truly rotting away in the courtyard just outside these castle doors - but I am a King as much as a father, little sister. I may hope for Aemon's survival, but I must keep the peace, and if there is to be peace then the succession must be clear."

"And you cannot have a clear succession without a clear heir," Baelon says, standing at the foot of the steps before the throne, where Father always stood. Of all her uncles and aunts, Rhaenys has ever been closer to Boremund than anyone, but Baelon always spoiled her for lack of a daughter of his own - surely that was not false? Surely he does not so quickly seek to take her father's place? "Aemon cannot inherit while absent, even if he does yet live."

Mother screams, launching forward now toward Baelon as if to claw out his eyes, or his maligning tongue.

* * *

He is tied to the mast and whipped until his skin hangs in shreds and patchs from his back.

The ship's doctor treats him, stitching what can be stitched and binding the rest, and pouring a restorative potion down his gullet as though he were a tourney horse.

"If only you were not so big," the doctor says, in what Aemon thinks might be Pentoshi - he can understand what of it sounds Valyrian, and no more. "Then the captain would keep you, and you would not be sent belowdecks."

Aemon has never before been so relieved to have his mother's height - they threw what remained of the captain's last favourite overboard just three days past.

* * *

"Dragonstone belongs to my daughter, you insolent little brat," Mother says, and Baelon steps back from the force of her gaze. "I don't care a damn that you wish yet to be in the Freehold, I don't care a damn that you feel I ought to be sympathetic because I relinquished Storm's End to my brother so I could wed Aemon - Dragonstone is not for you!"

"The whole of King's Landing knows that Rhaenys will wed the Sea Snake," Baelon says, and Rhaenys wonders how it is that everyone knows she and Corlys will wed when he has not yet agreed to it - he worries that he is too old, or that he will be a poor husband if he continues his adventuring.

He always worries that he will make a poor Prince Consort, she knows, even if he has not said as much. Rhaenys is more worried that they will never have a chance to test his mettle, if her uncle has his way.

"Her children will have High Tide, and all of Corlys' fortunes-"

"And yours will have the Iron Throne!" Mother shouts. "I am no fool, nephew, and neither is your mother - Dragonstone will go to Rhaenys, and with it all her rights!"

"It is not befitting of a future queen to listen at keyholes," Corlys whispers right against Rhaenys' ear, and she almost jumps - but she heard the shuffle of his soft-soled boots before he reached her, and the cold-salt scent that follows him everywhere from his ships. "Baelon persists in pressing his claim?"

Something smashes from inside Mother's solar, and Rhaenys flinches. Corlys looks embarrassed and worried in equal measure, and Rhaenys wonders - he never knew his parents, lost at sea when he was a babe in the cradle, and his grandmother was the last of her line of House Targaryen, half-mad with visions of the future. He has never had a mother to fight on his behalf. Is he afraid of Mother?

She cannot wait for him to see just how terrible Grandmother is in full flight.

"I was not expecting you," she admits, "but I am glad that you're here. Have you given any further consideration…?"

"I will not be the husband you need," he says, "or the husband that you want, I suspect, but I will be your husband, if you will have me."

"You've meant to say yes the whole time, you rogue," she says, delighted to the point of ignoring Mother and Baelon, still screeching at one another in the solar. "Whatever took you so long in saying it?"

"Well," he says, reaching into his belled sleeve and drawing out a box. "I had to find a suitable betrothal gift, didn't I?"

The ring is dense and plain, polished iron engraved with a whorling pattern that might almost be dragons in flight. Had he presented her with some ancient heirloom of House Velaryon, she would have wondered how well he truly knows her, but this is strong, like she is.

"And I have men searching for Blackfyre," he says. "Your father had it when he fell, so it may yet be with Vayeles."

His beard is soft under her touch, and his smile is brilliant.

"That," she says, "will do for now."

* * *

Volantis' bells echo strangely down here belowdecks, repeating and doubling until they ring inside Aemon's head as well as without.

"Above!" one of the slavers shouts. "Above, come on now, we've stock to move!"

Stock, meaning both goods and people. Aemon is not so much a fool or a hypocrite as to deny the slave's bones on which the Freehold was built, but having felt that pain these past months, well. He knows better now.

His wounds have not yet healed since his last whipping, and he is almost glad of it - at least they will not risk him carrying much, not while his back has been oozing blood and pus every day, and so he is given only a single bale to carry down the gangplank for inspection by the hugely tall man below on the dock.

"Master Mopatis expects his merchandise to arrive in perfect condition," the pirate with the ruby in his tooth says, foot to Aemon's seeping bandages. "Do not fall, dragonborn."

He does not fall until he has set his bale down with the rest, and moved aside to let the others in. He trips over an uneven board, or the end of a rope, and simply cannot find his balance.

He has fallen before, face-down, but always in armour, or into his and Jocelyn's soft bed. This aches, and sets his whole back bleeding again, neck and shoulders and arse altogether.

There is a blankness, and a shadow, and then he opens his eyes and the hugely tall man is kneeling beside him.

"This ring," the tall man says, "is a relic of the Freehold."

"It belonged," Aemon says, "to my great-grandfather."

The tall man's smile spreads, and Aemon feels dizzy. Loss of blood or pain or hope, he doesn't know the cause, and it doesn't matter because the tall man is draping him in soft, soft linen, and the heat of the sun is off his wounds.

"I will take the Prince," the tall man calls, "and you will pray for your lives."

The pirates argue, and the tall man barks an order, and there is the sound of fighting. Then the tall man smiles again, and Aemon does his best to return it.

* * *

Rhaenys stands at the foot of the steps leading to the throne, wearing the same circlet of beaten silver her father always favoured.

"I have been convinced," Grandfather says, "that the direct line is the best to keep with, to avoid messes in the succession."

Baelon seethes, in the shadows, but Mother and Grandmother glow, and Rhaenys is relieved enough in her security that it eases the sting of her father's absence, just a little.


	2. A beautiful, lofty thing

Daella wakes, after the war of childbirth, and thinks fuck.

"And here I thought you'd surrendered," Rodrick says, his voice soft as it only becomes when he is exhausted, or terrified. Perhaps both, this time. "Welcome back, my love."

She turns her head to see his beloved face, his long nose and soft, thin mouth, his star-bright brown eyes.

"Did I win?" she asks, and he smiles wider than she's seen since their wedding day.

* * *

Aemma is a beautiful child, with Rodrick's thick brown hair and Daella's deep violet eyes, and a gurgling laugh that makes Daella's heart sing. It reminds her of her mother, who she sees only half so much as she would like, and of sweet little Gael, who she hardly sees at all.

"A fine Lady Arryn she will make," Rodrick coos, balancing Aemma against his barrel of a chest as she snores happily to the rumble of his voice. "Don't you think, my love?"

The midwife thinks Daella will have no more children, and they are inclined to believe her. They had such trouble having Aemma, after all, so many years of grief and disappointment behind them, so many years of cursing the gods for denying her her mother's bounteous fertility - but enough. Aemma is more than enough, and Rodrick so good a man as to want to guard her inheritance.

"We will need to choose a husband for her," Daella says, even though she wishes she didn't have to. There has been such blissful peace, since she woke from the birthing bed, and this will shatter it. Alas. "A good husband, one who won't try and usurp her."

"So none of my cousins, then," Rodrick agrees, soft face hardening. "One of your nephews, maybe?"

"One of Baelon's boys, maybe," she says thoughtfully, "if Aemon succeeds in convincing Father to accept his Rhaenys as his heir."

Aemon has always had their lord father in the palm of his hand, whether Father would admit it or not, and Father adores Jocelyn, too - there are good odds that they will get their way, when it comes down to it. Baelon is cannier and more cunning than Daella usually likes, but Alyssa is a soft thing, and perhaps one of their boys will inherit more of Alyssa's nature than they will Baelon's.

Or perhaps Jocelyn and Aemon will have more than one boy - Aemon has always been her favourite brother, and she has always loved Jocelyn. If their children are even half the people her brother and his wife are, she would happily see Aemma wed to one of them.

* * *

Aemma grows tall, like both Rodrick and Daella, with Rodrick's broad shoulders and Daella's long legs. Her hair curls just like her grandmother's, and her gurgling laugh remains sweet as a plum, and she follows at Rodrick's heels with a sharply attentive gleam in her eyes that reminds Daella of her father, of Aemon.

Aemon, who is missing. Aemon, who Baelon insists is dead.

Jocelyn and Rhaenys both are certain that Aemon lives, and Daella is more inclined to believe their word than Baelon's. No one in the world stands to gain more from Aemon's death than Baelon, after all - it would be a simple thing to nudge Father away from maintaining Rhaenys' rights in his grief, if one were so inclinedl.

* * *

Baelon's eldest boy is reported to be a jolly, fat boy, fifteen to Aemma's ten, and Daella and Rodrick have tentatively settled on choosing him for a consort for their sweet girl.

Not that they've told anyone, of course - there's rumour enough circling King's Landing to fuel the whole realm, and Daella won't see her seeking out a son of Baelon's to wed her daughter be used as support of his claim over Rhaenys'.

"Mama," Aemma says, skidding sideways into Daella's solar in her soft slippers. "Cousin Albrecht is saying that he will have the Eyrie when Father dies - will you come and tell him he is wrong?"

Albrecht is Rodrick's cousin, a hardy young man of twenty-three who is a Grafton, not an Arryn, because his claim to the Eyrie is two generations removed and on the distaff anyways. Daella loathes him, has done since he boasted to everyone who would listen at the new year's tourney that Aemma would be his wife as soon as she was flowered. Rodrick heard, and broke his nose for it, but even that has not quelled the fool's ardour.

"He is wrong," Daella says, waving Rhea and Melantha and the rest back into their seats as she rises. Daella has her mother's height, her mother's strength, her grandfather's careful rage, and she will crush this boy who thinks to claim her daughter. "I will remind him of that, my dove, worry not."

She breaks not only his nose but also his cheekbone before Rodrick, laughing, tugs her away - and there is nothing more spoken of Albrecht Grafton wedding Aemma Arryn.

* * *

"It's the talk of the realm, apparently," Rodrick says, looking at her over the tops of his letters. "Outrageous, some are calling it."

"Fewer than might say so, if we did not have dragons," Daella says, amused - she can imagine how much more opposition her father might face, if he did not have Vermithor looming at his shoulder. The Fury guards Father more fiercely than the Kingsguard ever could, more fiercely even than Mother, and few dare to speak out against him with Vermithor roosting in the dragonpit.

Rhaenys has a dragon, too. A beautiful thing, shining red as the dawn with teeth like swords. Perhaps that will keep her more securely on the throne - that, and Corlys Velaryon's gold.

Rhaenys being named heir in Aemon's absence bodes well for Aemma, though. If there is to be a Queen on the Iron Throne, how can anyone dispute a Lady of the Eyrie? Which is not to say that Daella is glad that her brother is missing - she could never be glad of Aemon's absence - but if this might make Aemma's life easier, well. She loves anything that improves Aemma's lot.

"We ought to go to King's Landing," Rodrick says, setting aside his letters and rising to stand over her. "Swear our fealty to your niece, as Princess of Dragonstone."

"Aemma can spend time with my family," Daella agrees, taking his hand and settling against him as she has a thousand times before. His arm settles heavily against her lower back, one big hand as good as sitting on her arse, and she nestles closer against him, fitting her hips to his, in retaliation. "It would do her good, to stand among them."

"Mayhaps we can discuss it on the morrow," he says, hefting her over his shoulder and booming out a laugh. "What say you, wife?"

She bites his shoulder blade through the thin linen of his shirt, which makes him laugh more and pinch her backside, and they're both laughing even after she pushes their bedchamber door closed behind them.

* * *

"Could I have a dragon, Mama?" Aemma asks. "I am as much a Targaryen as the others, aren't I?"

"You're more a Targaryen than any of these dragonseeds who seek a mount, my dove," Daella says. "I shall ask my mother, and see if she can't find an egg for you, my sweet."

"Make sure it's blue," Rodrick says, bracing his arm around Aemma's shoulders to keep her from curling in on herself, as she does when she's feeling shy. "Can't have Lady Arryn riding a dragon in Targaryen colours, can we?"

Aemma giggles at that, standing straighter for having Rodrick beside her, and smoothes her pale hands over her skirts. She's pretty as a picture, in rich, creamy Arryn blue, with a chain of lapis and moonstones wound through her dark hair, and Daella is certain that her daughter is the finest of all her parents' grandchildren - even proud Rhaenys, sixteen now and fierce, so much like Mother that it catches Daella's breath in her throat when Rhaenys crosses the throne room to greet them.

"Your Highness," Daella says, dipping as deep as she had for Aemon, when last she saw her brother - such is Rhaenys' right now, after all. "It is good to see you-"

"Come now, Aunt Daella," Rhaenys chides, smiling so much like Aemon that it hurts, right between Daella's ribs. "Surely we need not stand on such ceremony with one another? We are family, after all!"

Over across the floor, Baelon is watching with sharp, resentful eyes, and Daella wonders at that - yes, he is cunning, yes, he is canny, but he has never been greedy or unkind, and that is all she can see on his face now, as he watches Rhaenys crouch just a little to look Aemma in the eye.

"And here," Rhaenys says, "my cousin, who is my equal - what say you, Lady Aemma? Will you serve me as your father does our grandfather?"

"I would be honoured, Princess," Aemma says breathlessly, flushing the same unpleasant, blotchy pink as Rodrick, and seeming twice as charming for the lack of artifice. "Oh, cousin- may I call you cousin?"

"Of course, little one," Rhaenys laughs. "Come, we shall speak with our lord grandfather, and then our lady grandmother, and then I will show you off to all of court while your poor mama has to stay here and chat with our aunts and uncles - how does that sound?"

* * *

"You would have my son," Baelon says, jaw locked in temper, "take his wife's name."

"We would," Rodrick says calmly. "For it will not be by his blood that any children born of his union with my daughter claim the Eyrie, but by hers. By their Arryn blood."

"You would have a Targaryen throw aside his heritage," Baelon says, rising from his seat, "rather than have your daughter honour the Valyrian blood in her veins?"

Rodrick rises too. He stands three or four inches taller than Baelon, Brave Baelon, and is half as broad again in the shoulder, but Baelon does not back from him. Daella watches Rodrick, aware that Alyssa, across the table, is watching Baelon with frantic eyes. With angry eyes.

Daella always thought Alyssa soft, thought her gentle, but she has seen none of the sister she remembers since their arrival at court - perhaps it was not so much Baelon as Alyssa who so pressed to have Baelon recognised as their father's heir. Perhaps it is Alyssa, who always tried so hard to catch Aemon's eye when they were girls, who seeks to force Aemon's daughter by another woman out.

Perhaps she ought to say as much to Jocelyn. Daella loves her aunt dearly, but she knows that Jocelyn is a true Baratheon, a tempest, fierce but utterly without forethought. It could do no harm to advise her to be cautious of Alyssa.

Perhaps she will have a word with Mother, too. Mother does love Rhaenys so.

* * *

"I think," Rodrick says, fingers twisting through the spill of her hair where it lies moon-pale across his chest, "that introducing Aemma to your niece was a splendid idea."

Daella hums an agreement, sweeping her thumb over and back across the thick, gnarled scar just above his elbow, a remnant of a fall onto a tangle of thorny briars in his youth. She has never known him without it, no more than he knows her without the ugly mark across the backs of her thighs, where she sat on the edge of a hot anvil while flirting with the smith's apprentice.

"Your father approached me about having her foster here at court," Rodrick says quietly, gently, knowing how much this will hurt her to even consider - for it will hurt him just the same. "We cannot rightly refuse him."

"And I cannot leave her here alone," Daella says, lifting her head to rest her chin on his collarbone, so she can look him in the eye. "My love-"

"I know," he says. "I don't think your mother would even think to guard against your sister. They're all so worried about your brother that she would go unnoticed, like a thief in the night."

"Her," Daella agrees, sitting up and taking Rodrick's restless hands in her own. "Or that odious younger boy of theirs."

Yes, Daella has watched her sister's sons - Viserys, the one they would have for Aemma, is as plump and pleasant and genuinely sweet as promised, but Daemon, the other one, has a nasty streak that puts Daella in mind of the stories Father and Mother reluctantly shared of their uncle.

He is a charming boy, of course he is, no son of Baelon's could be otherwise. But he is also cruel, in a way that has nothing to do with even this new, hungry side of her brother that Daella is only now seeing. She will not see him anywhere near Aemma, if she can help it.

Rodrick sits as well, sweat shining on his skin in the clammy, humid heat of the city, and she longs very suddenly for their elegant, airy apartments in the Eyrie, and to have Aemma there as well.

"Mayhaps," she says, "if I speak with Mama, I might find a way around your having to leave our girl and me behind when you return home."

* * *

"I would send Rhaenys with you, if I thought I'd get away with it," Mother says, Daella's arm looped through hers as they walk the gardens. "Keep her away from all the poison for a year or two more, but I think Corlys Velaryon would declare war on me if I tried."

Yes, Daella has seen the way Rhaenys' soon-to-be-husband looks at her. Rodrick looked at her like that, in the very first thrill of their love. He would have gone to war for her then, and likely still would, if necessary.

"Viserys is a good boy," Mother says, as fond as she only ever is speaking of her grandchildren. "Baelon would have him be more a warrior, and Alyssa would have him be more a scholar - but he is just himself. A poet at heart, I think, but kind and sweet."

Ah. He reminds Mother of her father, then, of what few soft memories she has of the father who died when she was hardly more than a babe.

"He would be safe with us, Mama," Daella presses gently. "And it would do he and Aemma good to know one another, don't you think?"

"It certainly did your brother and Jocelyn no harm," Mama says, smiling now. Oh, how it had infuriated Alyssa! Aemon had gone to squire with Lord Robar, had been meant for Alyssa, but had fallen so desperately in love with Jocelyn that Father, soft at the best of times, had not been able to refuse them. "I will speak with your father, sweetling, and see if I can't make him see sense. Viserys would thrive in the Eyrie, I think, just as you did."

Aemma will always take precedence in the Eyrie, too - best get the boy used to it early, so he won't chafe at it the way his father does now.


	3. Heroically found

Aemon Targaryen is six years older now than when he lost his dragon and his world, but a thousand years wiser. His back is criss-crossed with whipping scars, his knees aching in a way he can't always predict, and his hair is white now, rather than the pale silvery blonde of his youth.

The Red Keep rises eternal above the buzz of King's Landing, precisely as he remembers save for Vayeles' absence in the skies above, wheeling and keening to welcome him home.

Will Jocelyn's hair still be black as night and soft as silk between his fingers? Will Rhaenys still have plump cheeks and mischief in her smile? Will Father still be cautious, will Mother still be fierce? And Baelon, and Alyssa, and Daella, and all the rest down to little Gael, will they be as he remembers them? Six years is nothing, but it is a lifetime, too.

Rhaenys is twenty-two now. If she has her way, and she always does, she and Corlys are likely wed now. His little princess might well be a mother. Gods preserve him, there is so much he may have missed!

Petruchio claps him on the back, an encouragement and a warning alike. "Come, my friend," he says, smiling so the sun catches on the emerald set into his eye tooth, "your castle awaits."

* * *

Rhaenys runs.

She and Mother and Grandmother are the only ones who have never truly given up hope, and this is her last chance. If this is a ruse, if this is some horrible person's idea of a jape, then she will let that last flicker in her heart die, but… But it might be true. It could be. They haven't had anything but an occasional rumour for six years now, no real proof to support their hope, but this!

The boy who came for her and Mother had been flushed and flustered and panicked, and Rhaenys feels much the same. Her heart is throbbing in her throat as she hurls herself out the doors and down the steps, to the gates, where she can see one man - enormously tall, and dressed in sumptuous green-and-gold silks of curious design, like an Essosi Tyrell - and another.

Papa's hair is gone all to white, and he's leaning on a cane. Beyond that, he seems only tired, and Rhaenys wails like a girl of Aemma's age as she throws herself into his waiting arms.

"My darling girl," he says, voice thick with tears and wear but still him. "Oh, my sweet child, my girl, my own heart, how glad I am to see you."

Rhaenys cannot speak. How can she do anything at all but cling to him, and try not to drown in her own tears? She has spent the past six years refusing to cry for her father, because to do so seemed to be an admittance of his death. She could not give Baelon and Alyssa that pleasure, and so it seems all the pent-up rage and grief and fear is coming out now, onto Father's simple red tunic.

Mother hits them so hard they stagger and fall. They land on the worn-smooth cobbles inside the castle gates and lay there, laughing and weeping and, once Rhaenys manages to extricate herself and get to her feet, kissing.

She used roll her eyes when Mama and Father kissed. She never thought she'd be glad to see it.

* * *

King Jaehaerys rises from the throne when Rhaenys and Jocelyn run in, Aemon trailing them by their hands.

Aemon cannot but weep at the sight of his father's face. He seems as unchanged as the throne, and yet also irreversibly different. Slighter, more stooped, softer in the face, somehow. For a terrible moment, Aemon is afraid that the grief written into the lines around Father's eyes are for Mother, but she is waiting at the foot of the throne, and together they cross the floor to Aemon.

"My dearest boy," Father says, and draws him close. Aemon holds on as tight to his father as Rhaenys had to him, and does not try to hide how he weeps when Mother strokes her thin fingers over his hair. "Oh, my boy, my boy, how we have missed you, how we all have missed you-"

Mother takes him then, and then there is sweet little Gael, two years Rhaenys' senior and still innocent as a child, and there is Alyssa, kissing him on the corner of the mouth as though still trying to chase him away from Jocelyn, and Baelon smiling in that particular bittersweet, cheated way of his.

And Jocelyn, and Rhaenys. How he has missed this, missed them, and he cannot but turn his head to kiss first Jocelyn's temple and then Rhaenys', for having them under his arms is like having his heart restored to his chest for the first time since Vayeles died on the reef beyond Tarth.

The girl with the dark hair and smiling eyes can only be Daella's daughter, the pearl of Rodrick Arryn's world, and the plump young man on her arm must be Baelon and Alyssa's eldest boy, because he has Alyssa's pink face and Baelon's appalling, tufty beard.

There is another boy of Baelon's, clean-shaven and sharp in the same hungry way as Alyssa, standing with salt-weathered Corlys and…

Corlys and two children. Two children with Rhaenys' smiling eyes.

"Oh, my sweet girl," he says to Rhaenys, leaning into the fierce embrace Jocelyn locks suddenly around his waist. "How wonderfully you have done without me."

Baelon and Alyssa and that sharp-faced second boy of theirs lurk in the shadows, and Aemon ignores them as Jocelyn coaxes him to a chair and Rhaenys brings forth her beautiful children so that he can meet them. Not even Alyssa's greed and Baelon's bitterness can ruin this most joyous of days.

* * *

"Tell me, cousin," Daemon says, and Aemma scowls. He is to be her goodbrother, and she wishes more than anything that she could have another. "What changes now, with the return of our uncle?"

"Little for you, cousin," Aemma says, not looking away from her ledgers. Well, they are Lord Darklyn's ledgers, as master of coin, but he has a tendency to forget to carry his ones in the smaller accounts, and so Aemma has made a habit of looking over them since she came to court, with Rhaenys' permission.

It should be with Grandfather's permission, but he allows Rhaenys the run of things so long as she does not run wild.

"But much for you, Aemma," Daemon says, sitting louche and predatory in the seat opposite her. She would call for Viserys, who is in the next alcove of the library, but he has yet to grow enough spine to stand up to Daemon. "Rhaenys is no longer the greatest power in the realm save for Grandfather and his septon, little falcon, and that leaves you much further from the might you have wielded this past year, doesn't it?"

Does Daemon think to claim power through Uncle Aemon, somehow? What a fool. Rhaenys has always warned her to be careful of him, as has Mama, and she has been very careful. He has never been quite so blatant before, though, and she is glad that she will have this moment to recall, if ever Viserys attempts to convince her to be kinder to his brother.

"You've never understood how the realm works, have you Daemon?" she says, cold as winter in the Eyrie. "You've always been more a Maegor than an Aenys, and just as stupid."

Daemon's handsome, hard-cut face floods brilliant red, and he rises to loom over her. He'd have better luck with Viserys, truthfully, because Viserys is not only shorter than Aemma by two inches but also in possession of a habit of cowering from Daemon.

Aemma has never cowered from anyone in her life. She is not about to start now.

"Direct proximity to the throne does not guarantee control," she warns Daemon, who she knows has been spreading rumours about a betrothal between himself and Rhaenys' Laena. False rumours, of course, since Aemma knows that Rhaenys doesn't like Daemon, even if Corlys does, and since she knows that Rhaenys has been making discreet enquiries of Winterfell, to sooth the hurt caused by the seizure of the New Gift. "Do not think you will be able to take advantage of this upheaval, cousin. We will stand against you every step of the way."

"What a terrible obstacle you and Rhaenys will present from the Eyrie and Driftmark," he sneers. "However will I manage, with the two of you nagging me from afar?"

Aemma gathers up her ledgers - Lord Darklyn's ledgers - and rises, smiling as sweetly as she knows how.

"Who says we will be leaving court?" she asks. "Uncle Aemon will surely not wish to be parted from Rhaenys so soon after his return, and Rhaenys will not wish to be parted from me. No, I think we will be here for quite some time yet, cousin. "

She collects Viserys on her way past, accepts the kiss he presses to her cheek with a smile, and does not rush her departure at all. She must reach Rhaenys' rooms without any sign of her fear being sighted by Daemon's little birds, and she has not yet figured out all their hiding places.

* * *

"They will be at war with one another within the year," Alysanne sighs, leaning back into Jaehaerys' hands as easy as breathing while he rubs away her headache. "How are we to stop them?"

"I am supposedly the Conciliator," he says, pressing his thumbs to the base of her skull and smiling a little at the way she hisses, but presses back just as hard. She has ever been a study in contradictions, his Aly. "But I cannot yet see the path that we must take in this, Aly. We must trust in Aemon, though, I know that much."

"And this cheesemonger to whom we owe his life?" she asks. "Must we also trust in him? He has already mentioned half a dozen time that he has children much of an age with the twins, and has told Jocelyn twenty times that he is a master of figures, who can make coin appear from thin air."

"Lord Darklyn is a perfectly serviceable master of coin, now that Aemma is correcting his ledgers," Jaehaerys promises. "But we must offer him something, Aly - he saved Aemon. He brought home our boy. We cannot ignore that."

She takes his hands, brings them over her shoulders, and kisses his knuckles one by one.

"I do not trust any of this, save for Rhaenys," she says. "Rhaenys, and you."

* * *

Jocelyn guides him to lay his head on her breast afterwards, and she is still wearing the same perfume - no sweet Highgarden roses for his storm-blown blossom, but something sharp and airy, like the breezes off Shipbreaker Bay.

Her hair is still all coal-black, save for wings of silver-grey at her temples. It is still like satin against his skin when, hours later, she guides him onto his back and guides him home, inside her.

"There has never been any but you for me," she breathes against his mouth, and his heart feels so full, safe in the promise that she had no other while he was missing, just as he could not tolerate the thought of having another woman despite Petruchio's offers of whores of every shape and style and manner.

This time, in the aftermath, he guides her to lay against his chest, her ear over his racing heart and her hand tangled together with his.

"Baelon was not pleased to see me home," he says, as much to the stars shimmering beyond their window as to his wife. "And Alyssa even less so."

"Did you know," Jocelyn says, confiding in the thick blankets of their bed as much as in him, "that Baelon attempted to convince my brother to name him heir ahead of our daughter?"

He has not been home long enough to have heard all the gossip and the history that he has missed, but he is already dreading it. He and Baelon were close, once.


	4. In desperate music wound

Viserys will lose his name today, and Daemon is expected to celebrate it.

If his celebrated grandfather was half so strong as he is supposed to be, he would not allow this. But then, has the great Conciliator not given way to his council of fools? There is the Queen, straight and proud and arrogant, and Rhaenys, who walks as though Dragonstone is already hers, and fat Barth who acts as though he has a right to walk among the dragons, and there is Aemma.

His cousin, after today his goodsister, and his enemy. He wishes nothing but ill luck on Aemma, and damn Viserys along with her for being so weak as to, as to-

Viserys claims to love Aemma. How could anyone love that bitch?

* * *

When they were small - well, when Vis was small, since Daemon does not think that he himself has ever truly been small, not in the ways that matter - Vis did as he was told. He went where Daemon led, did what Daemon bid, and always listened to what advice and guidance Mother offered. Daemon has always known his mother to be the wisest of women, the wisest of anyone, and he has cleaved close to her teachings all his life.

Daemon knows that he can be more than he is. Viserys, the stupid fat fool, has never wanted to be more than he is. Their father would have been the same had Mother not been at his side, her elbow digging into his reluctant ribs.

Rhaenys will be more than she ought. No woman has ever held the throne in her own right, not even brave Visenya, so what right has Rhaenys to it? Uncle Aemon is changed by his time away, so much so that Daemon has heard Mother and his father whispering of it late into the night more than once, but Rhaenys has been the same hard-necked, interfering wasp all her life. That is unlikely to change now, unless for the worse, once she is crowned queen.

She might have at least furnished the realm with a worthy consort, if she is insisting on pressing her claim. Daemon loves Corlys as well as he loves any man, for Corlys has a wild heart to match his own, but he is no fit consort to the Iron Throne! He has Valyrian blood, even Daemon will not deny it, but he has no Targaryen blood.

Daemon would have made Rhaenys a better consort than Corlys. What use a sea-snake when she might have had a dragon? He will never understand women such as her.

* * *

Viserys' pink face is shiny with happiness, and even Mother's ill humour cannot seem to dampen him. Their father seems more pleased than he ought to be at having his heir stolen away, but perhaps that is just it. Mayhaps their father is pleased that this makes Daemon his heir.

Viserys is pleased about that. He's delighted to become Aemma's consort, because he has no spine, and no pride. He likes the blues and creams Aemma coaxes him to wear, throwing over his blacks and reds as if they have no meaning. Viserys has never seemed to truly understand what it is to be a dragon, of course, but he is too ready to ascend to the distant, fragile Eyrie.

No other man could have turned the Black Dread into a pet who noses his robes for treats, but Viserys has. Balerion has struck fear into the hearts of every man in Westeros for generations, but in the solitude of the dragonpit, Viserys has all but castrated the beast. Caraxes will never be made so… so… So pathetic, just as Daemon will always stand above his idiot brother.

Viserys will be a kept man, someday. Daemon will always be free. He will not allow himself to be chained. He won't.

* * *

Daemon sits with Corlys at the wedding feast, watching the dancing. Corlys would usually be the first man on the floor, of course, but the King begged Rhaenys' hand for the first dance and so Corlys has found himself adrift.

Daemon might have danced with the Queen, but he finds that he has no taste for revelry today. How can he celebrate Rhaenys' triumph? How can he find pleasure in anything that brings Aemma joy? No, today is not for happiness. Today is for Daemon's enemies, and for him to consider things very carefully.

Mother and his father are dancing, but only because the Queen made it clear just how fierce her displeasure would run if they did not. So it Daemon, and Corlys, and a jug of passable fine Arbor gold.

"We'll surely have more weddings soon," Corlys says, glancing sidelong at Daemon. "Have you given it any thought, my young friend?"

Corlys' eyes are sharp sea-green, and Daemon refuses to balk.

"There has been talk," Daemon admits. He would say this to no man other than Corlys, and hates to share this even with him - to share anything with Corlys is to share it with Rhaenys, after all. "Some broodmare in the Vale. They think she will tame me, I suppose."

"They think," Corlys says, voice cooler than Daemon has ever heard from his friend, "that giving you the heiress to Runestone for a bride might settle you. She's a wealthy girl, and handsome besides."

"You speak as though you know her."

"I met her when we visited at the Eyrie," Corlys admits. "Her Grace thinks it a fine match indeed, and what Her Grace likes, His Grace permits."

"What is this hold the Vale of Arryn has over my grandparents?" Daemon asks, suddenly furious. "First Daena, then Viserys, and now me! What benefit is there in it?"

"They were peaceful allies to the Conquerors," Corlys says reasonably. "I've heard rumours of a Tully match as well, but since there are a brace of Tully men you'd have no chance at Riverrun, and there are innumerable Starks but not a cunny between them. Runestone is as fine a keep as there is in Westeros, Daemon. Do not fight this."

"There are other heiresses," Daemon says, something in his head ticking. Is this how Mother feels, when she has one of her bouts of inspiration? "Your Laena will inherit High Tide, won't she? Laenor will take the throne, and-"

"Both our children will wed outside the family, my friend," Corlys says, as though this ought to be obvious. His children are Targaryens, how could such a thing be obvious? "My goodfather's magister has a son for Laena, I'm told, who has no qualms about taking her name - would you, Daemon? Could you shuck your reds and blacks for Velaryon silvers and greens?"

Daemon will wear black until the day he dies, and vows then and there to never, everwear green.

"Laena is a Targaryen-"

"Aye, she is," Corlys agrees, "but she'll keep my name when she takes High Tide, just as she'll wed more where I bid than where her mother does. The magister returned Prince Aemon to us from death, and he should be rewarded for it. Rhaenys would give him some keep in the Crownlands, and access to markets such as other Essosi merchants could only dream - but it isn't coin the man wants. I know the Essosi, and there are plenty of them as obsessed with Valyrian blood as we are. Laena is of two Valyrian bloodlines, and rich beyond any man's wildest dreams. She'll satisfy even the Old Blood of Volantis."

"Then she should wed Valyrian-"

"You will not have my daughter to wife, Daemon," Corlys snaps. "Laena is set, and you are set, and that is an end to it. Do not make a fool of yourself. You are not a stupid man, and I should hate to see you garner a reputation for being one."

* * *

At the bedding, Uncle Aemon and Corlys and Boremund Baratheon heave Aemma up away from reaching hands before she's even been stripped of her slippers, while Viserys laughs, pink and smiling, amidst a crowd of cackling hens.

Daemon stands back and scowls. At his wedding, which his father admitted will be sooner than any of them might like, there will be no such joy. Doubtless his bride won't be shown any such favour.

Mother is sitting near the Queen, immaculate and tight-lipped, and Daemon follows her lead. He will not speak a word on this or on his own upcoming marriage, not until she does. If he calls this one fault into question, he does not think he would be able to stop, and such behaviour would surely earn the ire of the Queen.

Even Daemon dreads his grandmother's wrath.


	5. Hands made wild by love

"She's a fine one, isn't she?" Rhaenys whispers, nudging her sharp elbow into Viserys' soft side. "You've told Aemma well done from all of us, I hope?"

"Of course, cousin," Viserys says, weary and fond. Aemma snores in her bed, hidden by almost-sheer white curtains, and Rhaenys hopes that this little babe-in-arms has even half as much good sense as her mama.

"Aemma wishes to name her Rhaenyra, cousin," Viserys says, nudging his hip to hers. "If you permit it, that is."

Rhaenys is not a woman given to tears, but she cries at that. She and Aemma have always been lone ducks, oddities to their parents simply for having no siblings, and they cleaved together as girls. It is a great honour to know that her little cousin esteems her so highly, if only because Rhaenys has always held Aemma as the best of women.

"I should be delighted," she says, smoothing little Rhaenyra's dark hair back from her pale face. "Thank you, cousin. I- thank you both."

* * *

Corlys has Laena under his arm and Laenor over his shoulder when he meets Rhaenys outside the library, looking a little sheepish.

"Lord Rodrick's maester threw us out," he admits. "Your hellions wouldn't shut up for long enough to do their reading."

"We aren't hellions, Papa!" Laena protests. "We're dragons!"

"Aye, dragons too small and silly even for the dragonpit," Corlys scolds, setting both children on their feet and ruffling their hair. He's terrible at remaining stern with them, and Rhaenys wonders if it's anything to do with how long he went without wife, without children - often, he looks at their wild babes as if he cannot believe his luck.

The children usually cause some mess that brings their papa's head down out of the clouds sharpish, but Rhaenys loves the softness her pirate shows only with herself and the children. None would believe the Sea Snake capable of it, but Rhaenys has seen it, and guards it more closely than any jewels.

"Your cousins are well?" he asks, drawing her under his arm as Laena sprints down the corridor, whooping and shouting, Laenor trailing good-naturedly in her wake.

"They are naming their daughter in my honour," she says. "It's an old family name, but no one has used it since before we came to Dragonstone, and Viserys says that it was chosen for me. Rhaenyra."

"A fine name," Corlys says approvingly. "Mother and babe both came through the birth well?"

"Let's just say that everyone is glad Aemma took more her father's size than her mother's," Rhaenys says, shaking her head. "The babe is a sturdy little thing - it would have been hard on Aemma, had she not been so sturdy herself."

Corlys kisses her cheek, which lets him nuzzles against her hair so he can think. He always says that he does his best thinking tucked around her, and she is hardly likely to complain about his being so affectionate.

"Daemon will be angry," he says. "That the babe and Aemma both lived."

Likely he will - Rhaenys will just have to smother her little cousin's fury. A shame she can't simply smother him.

* * *

They sail from Gulltown home - Corlys captains, of course, because there is nothing in the world he hates more than to stand aboard another man's ship - and Meleys screes in the sky above them, drawing answering cheers from the children.

Rhaenys might grumble that it is silly, Laenor being assumed as her heir when Laena is the elder, but some small part of her is happy with the arrangement. Laena has Corlys' wild heart, set alight by Rhaenys' own fierce temper, and the crown would stifle her. Laenor, with his quieter, more thoughtful demeanor, might flourish, and can always retreat to whatever madness Laena creates on Driftmark as a haven.

Laena will be Lady of Driftmark, Mistress of Tides, before Laenor ever comes to the crown - either Corlys' death or Rhaenys' ascension will see to it - and that is something of a relief. Laena trails her grandfather's footsteps like a hungry pup, the pair of them a younger mirror of Rhaenys and the King, and she is learning every lesson there is to be learned from Rhaenys' parents.

Laenor prefers the company of the Queen and her Hand. Septon Barth prefers to stand at his tall table as he goes about his many duties, and he has had a neat little step built for Laenor so that he can watch as the old man works. There's been a high stool in his workchamber for years, Grandmother's designated perch, and Laenor has carved out his own niche at her side, listening to every thoughtful argument between septon and queen. Rhaenys used do the same, lingering in her grandmother's shadow on the ground and in the air as she and Meleys found their feet, and it bodes well for Laenor that even at so young an age, he has seen that the true wisdom is not in the King, but in those who guide him.

Rhaenys hopes that she can give such worthy guides to her own grandchildren, when the time comes. She will have Aemma, and gods willing Corlys will live to a fine old age, but she will have to find others she can trust. Others without Valyrian blood, so they might have not only her trust, but that of her people.

* * *

Laena hardly stops laughing when she's on the ground, but she is near silent in the air - she folds herself against Meleys' thick neck and narrows her eyes against the wind, and she moves as if she can read the dragon's mind.

Laenor, though, he laughs - he finds the same joy Rhaenys remembers when Father would bring her out on Vayeles, or Grandmother on Silverwing. There's something keener in Laena's love, but Laenor is so quiet and reserved a child that Rhaenys savours every show of happiness from him. He is so much like her father, always sharp-eyed and always guarded, and has not yet met someone to bring his heart out, the way Mother does for Father, the way Vayeles used, before the slavers.

She wants dragons for her children. She's spoken to her grandmother about it already, about bringing the children to the dragonpit to choose eggs from among the many, because she wants them to know the thrill of that bond. Rhaenys was only four years old when she slipped away from her septa, slipped passed the guards, and found Meleys' egg.

Grandmother has always insisted that Meleys was daughter to Meraxes, and since there is no one alive left who could dispute her, Rhaenys is happy to agree. It always makes Grandfather thoughtful to hear that, more since he accepted Rhaenys as his heir than before. Father's return has taken the weight of that decision out of Grandfather's hands, but it is as if having to face the reality of Rhaenys sitting the throne someday has made him wonder what kind of Queen she will be.

Rhaenys has recently started wondering the same thing.

* * *

"Mama! Mama, can we go flying?"

They are barely beyond the Sisters when Laena starts asking, and Rhaenys has to remind herself that it is not appropriate to terrorise her cousin's bannermen. People are still wary of dragons, rightly so, and scaring them needlessly has no benefits. The Vale has been loyal for long enough that there is no need to remind them just who sits the Iron Throne, after all.

"Once we're over open water, we can fly," Rhaenys says, to which even Laenor groans in theatrical disappointment. "Less of that, thank you very much - you know how Captain Velaryon feels about whiney passengers."

Laena mocks swooning over the railings, which makes Laenor laugh even as he drags her safely back on deck. Corlys grumbles under his breath, wondering why sailing is not enough for their hellions, and Rhaenys slips her hand up under the back of his shirt in comfort.

"Just think," she says. "Imagine how feared Laena will be, leading her fleet on dragonback."

"She might conquer the Stepstones," Corlys says, leaning into her hand. "I suppose I can settle for that - a King for a son and a Queen for a daughter."

* * *

Rhaenys flies the children into the dragonpit when they return to King's Landing, and has to force them into the necessary bows when Meleys lowers her wings to reveal the King and Queen. They are too used to the more lax standards of behaviour Father allows on Dragonstone, and those she and Corlys indulge on Driftmark, and she will have to start training them in more courtly manners as soon as she can.

A shame to tame them. Needs must, though.

"You honour us, Your Graces," she says, rising from her bow and keeping her hands firm on the children's shoulders. "We did not expect such a reception."

"I'm sure you didn't," Grandfather says, reaching up a hand to stroke nosy Vermithor's massive nose - oh, what a kitten the Fury is, under his master's hands, and curious as a cat as well. "But there have been some interesting developments, and we thought it best to brief you as soon as you landed - we did not expect your passengers."

Grandmother beckons, and Laenor runs to her, Laena dawdling a little in his wake. Mother is standing just inside the door, her dark hair shining like jet in the gloom, and Grandmother sends the children away to her waiting embrace. Septon Barth is here as well, elbows deep in a bucket of entrails that he is throwing to the dragonlings, and his face is unusually grim.

The door closes behind Mother, and Grandfather sighs, settling into the warmth of Vermithor's fussing shadow - kitten and mother hen in one, with the way he sets his massive claws to picking at the ends of Grandfather's robes.

"Tell me, then," she says, accepting a canteen of water from Grandmother and trying not to cringe at the stink from Barth's long, bloody gloves as he peels them off and sets them aside. Meleys retreats to settle with Vhagar, snapping affectionately at one another as Rhaenys no longer could with Uncle Baelon by the end, and Silverwing nudges close against Vermithor's flank.

Grandmother pushes her away by the snout, earning her a snuff of hot breath all over her hair. Cats, all of them.

"You will notice that Caraxes is not with us," Barth says, shrugging out of his dragonkeeper's coat and into his septon's robes. "Your cousin has not reacted well to being shunted further down the succession, we think."

"Aemma's babe is a beauty," Rhaenys says. "A jolly little thing with Aemma's hair. They're calling her Rhaenyra."

"A fine name," Grandmother says, "and one that will no doubt inflame Daemon even further. What has Corlys to say?"

Of all the family, only Corlys is still at ease in Daemon's increasingly unpleasant company. Rhaenys hates to use that friendship for political ends, knowing as she does how hard Corlys works to remain friends with Daemon.

But it is their best insight into Daemon's anger. And so she has no choice.

"He hasn't heard anything since we left for the Eyrie," she says. "But he said Daemon would be angry if mother and babe lived. It seems he was right."

"We have word that he has flown west," Grandfather says from under Vermithor's chin. "And we have had no word from the Westerlands in many weeks."

"A marriage?"

"He has been more vocal about his opposition to the Royce match since Baelon's passing," Grandmother says, pushing the canteen back into Rhaenys' hands when she tries to return it. "And he has been more vocal about his opposition to you, sweetling. He thinks he should have Laena for a bride, and if not Laena, then Aemma's babe."

"No," Rhaenys says, because there is no part of her that can accept the notion of stupid Daemon having either Laena or little Rhaenyra. "No, he is to have Rhea Royce, and he ought to be pleased with that."

"We think he might be aiming for Greta Lannister," Barth says, of Lord Lannister's sister, two years Daemon's senior and easily the loveliest woman in the realm, "and we think he means to buy her hand with the half dozen dragon eggs he stole before he left."

* * *

Daemon asked for Rhaenys' hand, once. It was a long time ago, when they were all children, more or less, and she had laughed at him. Rhaenys had known from a very young age that the only cousin she might wed would be Viserys, and Daemon's silly manner had never appealed to her at the best of times. Aemma had been her very favourite cousin from the day they met, and Viserys is the best kind of harmless fool, but Daemon? Daemon is something else altogether.

"He deserves a better bride than that fat Royce girl," Aunt Alyssa says, "but I agree that he has gone about this badly. He is not likely to find another dragonrider in the Westerlands - there are not so many dragonseeds as he seems to think."

Grandfather is the fourth king to sit the throne, and the fourth king either disinclined to sire bastards or, in one very special case, incapable of doing so. There have not been so many Targaryen princes who lived to adulthood to sow their seed far and wide, and so any dragonseeds Daemon might find will be of older lines - Rhaenys' great-great-grandfather and beyond, those proud men who would not bend even to conquer westwards, it will be whatever remains of their seed that will try to hatch the stolen dragons.

But even of those - there are not many Valyrians in Westeros. The Celtigars were stewards to the Targaryens, as once the Tyrells were to the Gardeners, and the Velaryons kept to the seas and all that lies beneath the waves, and so even those bastard lines will have little or no claim to any dragon.

"Your granddaughter is a beautiful child," Rhaenys says sharply, because they have been speaking with Aunt Alyssa for half an hour and she has asked only for Daemon. "Aemma is well, and Viserys is already doting on the babe - Rhaenyra. You should visit, my lady."

"And I will, once the son that is more in danger is seen safe," Alyssa says, as typically aloof as ever. Aunt Daella once said that she no longer recognised the woman Aunt Alyssa grew into, and Grandmother had hushed her for it - but she had not denied it.

"Daemon is not in danger, child," Grandfather says, brow resting on his upraised fist. The seat he has claimed is a simple, plain thing, out of place in Alyssa's sumptuous rooms but made regal by his noble bearing. "He is a dangerous rogue, but he is not in danger. Caraxes will see to that."

"He is flying for Casterly Rock," Alyssa says. "Where in the realm is more dangerous than the lion's den?"

"And here we thought you did not know where he was bound - thank you, my dear."

Grandfather rises, dusting off his long robes, and Alyssa gapes.

"Baelon's absence does not excuse the way you coddle Daemon," he says, pressing his hand to her shoulder as he passes. "I miss him as well, sweetling, but the son is no match for the father - even at his worst, Baelon was a better man than Daemon. You might be better paying more attention to Viserys on occasion."

* * *

"I do not like it," Corlys says, pulling the door of Laena's bedchamber closed behind him as gently as he can. "I understand why you must go, but I do not like it one bit, Rhaenys."

All the family are gathered in King's Landing now, from Father and Mother right down to Maegelle in her septa's robes. The children think it all a fine adventure, but something in Rhaenys' gut is worried that there is some true and grave ill on the horizon.

"Father has no dragon to ride, and he is not well enough to lead the army regardless," Rhaenys says, taking him by both hands to guide him away to their own bedchamber, where she intends to mark him so deeply that every inch of him will ache for her while they are parted. "I am Grandfather's heir, after Father, and Meleys and I will have this made right."

Rhaenys cannot shake the terrible fear that had she only been kinder to Daemon, had she and Aemma laughed at him less, then maybe things would not have come so far as this. Maybe.

* * *

Grandfather draws them all down between Wendish Town and Wayfarer's Rest, with the Golden Tooth looming in the hills above them.

"I've sent for Daemon," he says. "If the boy still has any sense, he will come."

Grandmother remained in King's Landing, for fear that Daemon might be fool enough to lay claim to the throne in their absence. Rhaenys misses her for her solid good sense, and for the strength she and Grandfather give to one another.

"I think he will," Rhaenys says, prays. "He cannot want this to come to war any more than we do, Your Grace."

Grandfather takes her hand and squeezes tight, and she knows that he is praying, too. She hopes that Septon Barth and Aunt Maegelle are guiding all the others to do the same.

"If it comes to it, child," Grandfather says, still squeezing her hand in his, "if it comes to it - if we must strike - let me. I could not bear to have that stain on your soul."

* * *

Daemon arrives with the last rays of sunset, Caraxes shining like rubies in the dying light of the day. He is wearing no armour, carrying no sword, and wielding only his smile.

"Your Grace," he says, bowing lower than Rhaenys has ever seen of him. "And you as well, Your Highness, I am honoured that you should come all this way just for me."

"I'm sure you are, grandson," Grandfather says, rolling his eyes. "Rise, Daemon. Rise and face us, and we might give you a chance to explain to us your plan."

"The Royces are already demanding recompense," Rhaenys says. "Did you think of that, cousin? When you fled your obligations?"

Daemon has the sense to look a little shamed.

"I did not mean to insult my brother and his wife," he says, and Rhaenys believes him. Daemon has always been annoyed by Viserys, disappointed in him, but she has never doubted that the love between the brothers is sincere. "But I admit that my frustration at seeing their heir born… It perhaps drove me west sooner than Jocasta and I might have wished-"

"Jocasta Lannister?" Rhaenys asks, thinking of the plain little thing who's been among Grandmother's wards since she was barely able to walk - a plain little thing who guards herself better than the Kingsguard keep Grandfather. Interesting. She is not the bride Rhaenys might have picked for Daemon, but Lannister gold and Lannister swords would make even the plainest girl attractive, she supposes.

"Jo and I have been- I asked her to marry me almost a year ago," Daemon says, more embarrassed than shamed now. "I love her dearly, Your Grace, I swear it to you on Caraxes' life, on my lady mother's, and while this is not as we intended-"

"What do you mean, not as you intended?" Grandfather asks, eyes narrowing sharply. He leans forward just a little, one hand clenched on Blackfyre's hilt and the other balled tight before him, as if he is barely resisting the urge to slap Daemon. "You are promised in the Vale, child!"

"There has been unrest about that, Grandfather," Rhaenys says, uneasy now at the notion of Daemon having actually thought about this - there isn't another in the family as in tune with the gossip of the court as he is, with all of what Aemma calls his little birds and with his own knack for befriending all he meets, high and low. Corlys has always insisted that he is smarter than any of them give him credit for being, and while this is badly done, it is also making Rhaenys reconsider her least favourite cousin.

"Please, Grandfather," Daemon pleads. "The Vale had Aunt Daella, and now they have Viserys - they do not need me! Promise my heir to the Royces if you must, but please, Grandfather, think on this! Jo and I have acted badly, yes, but never in bad faith!"

Has Rhaenys ever seen Daemon so sincere? Has she ever seen him anything but sharp and full of fury? She does not think that she has, and that is what has her pressing her hand to Grandfather's shoulder, just as a suggestion that he pause a moment.

He sighs. Nothing more. Then he turns and walks back to his pavillion, hidden in Vermithor's shadow.

"Rhaenys," Daemon says, "I swear I did not mean harm by this-"

"They think you plan treason," she says simply. "Marrying the only daughter of the wealthiest man in the realm only gave their suspicions more weight, cousin."

"I am uneasy to be so far from the heart of things," he admits. "I have never been quiet about that. My lady mother counselled me to keep my thoughts more to myself, as did Corlys, but it was Jo that convinced me of it. She and I- We have been close a long while now, Rhaenys. Ever since Grandfather took me into his household, to keep a closer eye on me. You know how much time he spends with Grandmother, and Jo and I were ever the youngest in any company-"

Just as Rhaenys and Corlys were the most easily bored in company at Dragonstone or Driftmark, where she spent so much time with Father and with Grandmother Alyssa.

"You should have come to us."

"How could I? You all were set on my going to the Vale-"

"You should have gone to Corlys," she says. "Or to Viserys, Daemon - he loves no one save Aemma and little Rhaenyra so well as he loves you. He would do anything for you. He would have petitioned Grandfather on your behalf, and he is well loved in the Vale for his own sake and for Aemma's. He would have been your strongest ally, but now he and Aemma will think you mean harm to their daughter."

Daemon's face darkens enough to render him familiar, and there is a strange comfort in seeing the violence she knows lies in his heart return to the surface.

"I would never harm a child of Viserys'," he says, sounding insulted that anyone might think he would. "Whatever has been between us these last few years, I love my brother - even mine and Aemma's rivalry cannot change that."

What a quaint way of terming the seething hatred between Aemma and Daemon. How peculiar to see such restraint from Daemon.

"Had you not stolen the eggs," she says, "it might have been easier to believe that there was no malice in your actions. But Daemon… You must see that Grandfather must punish you somehow. "

"Let it be exile," he says, straightening his warrior's shoulders and smiling his rogue's smile. "Jo and I have already planned for that. Indeed, we've planned for that."

"I did not think you would plan on facing consequences," Rhaenys says. "You've never shown much taste for it before."

"Not for consequences, since we had planned on circumstances other than this. But we have never intended on languishing at the Rock, cousin."

* * *

"He plans," Grandfather says, slumped in the fine wooden chair that serves as his throne on campaign, "on conquering the Stepstones."

Grandmother, newly arrived from King's Landing and splendid in her shimmering silver-gold scale armour, begins to laugh.

"I don't see what's so funny, Aly!" Grandfather fumes, lurching forward to thump his fist down on the spread of maps. "A cadet branch of the House! What if his children seek advancement? What if they spread their wings westward?"

"They won't," Grandmother says, coming around to put her hands on Grandfather's shoulders - Rhaenys almost leaves then, because every touch between them is intimate and she feels intrusive. "We will plan for that, and we will be leaving the realm in good hands, silly man. Do you think Aemon and Rhaenys will allow him to endanger Laenor and his heirs? Don't be foolish."

Not very long ago, Rhaenys would have dismissed Daemon as a threat. She would have either ignored him or sought a means of ending that threat before it came to fruition, and both now sit heavy on her heart.

The Daemon who has visited with them every evening at sunset this week is not the Daemon she grew up with in King's Landing. Perhaps there is something in his insistence that Jocasta Lannister is tempering his wildness. Only time will truly tell.

"I want to meet them together," Grandmother says. "Daemon and little Jocasta - I can hardly believe that such a quiet girl had such rebellion in her!"

"You were a quiet girl," Grandfather grumbles, "except when Mother wasn't looking."

Rhaenys does leave them then, for it is nearly sunset and she wishes to warn Daemon of Grandfather's unwaveringly black mood - even Grandmother's arrival, with all her promises of a grand scheme of Father's and Barth's to appease the Royces, has not soothed him.

Vermithor is calmer though, with Silverwing grooming his flanks. It never fails to make her laugh to see the dragons mirroring their riders.

"Hello, girl," she says, leaning on Meleys' hip and sighing. "I miss the children - do you miss them too? I can't imagine you miss Corlys, not with the way you two grouse at one another, but I do. I can't remember when last I was away from him so long. I don't think I've ever been away from the children so long."

Meleys snorts, and then almost snickers, rolling one serving platter-size eye back to look at Rhaenys.

"No need to laugh at me for being moony," Rhaenys scolds her, reaching back absently to dig her fingers into the nearest wing-joint, where Meleys sometimes goes tight and sore after a long flight. " You're probably going to be moony after Caraxes if Daemon gets his way - don't think I haven't seen you two growing close, my girl."

Meleys snorts again, set alight by the setting sun, and Rhaenys leans closer. Against her better judgement, she is choosing to trust Daemon for the time being - she will have to hope for his wife's good influence, his brother's tempering his temper, her husband's strong will outlasting Daemon's foolish impulses, and more than anything, she will have to hope that Daemon will change the habits of a lifetime and show good sense.

"If we are lucky, girl," she says, "he really has changed. Or he'll die on the Stepstones without siring a son on the Lannister girl. Either way, we ought to be safe."

Once more, Meleys snorts.

"Aye," Rhaenys agrees. "It really does seem like wishful thinking, doesn't it?"


	6. Her soul in division from itself

"A double wedding," Corlys says, tugging at the high collar of his new tunic. It's stiff with silver thread embroidery, and he's been fiddling at it all morning. "A double wedding, Rhaenys."

"I know, love," she soothes him, slipping her powdered fingers under his collar in the hopes it will chafe a little less. "I helped arrange for it, remember?"

The children - children! As though they are not each older than Rhaenys was when she wed Corlys! - are away finishing their preparations, almost ready to leave for the sept. Rhaenys had gone to see their final fittings only two days previous, and it had shocked her to see them so arrayed, Laenor so louche and elegant in his Targaryen cloak, Laena so straight-backed and bright-eyed in her Velaryon turquoise.

It had shocked her to see them so adult. Sometimes, she still thinks of them as the wild little things who'd run giggling ahead of her and Corlys along the beaches of Driftmark. It has been a long time since they had such freedom, since they had the time for such things, but even so…

"There now," Corlys says, brushing away a stray tear with his knuckles, his touch as unwaveringly gentle now as it was during their long-ago courtship. "Let's not be sad today, dearheart - we'll dance and laugh, and the children won't be able to tell how sorry we are to see them go."

"I feel so silly," Rhaenys admits. "It isn't as if they're going far - Laenor will be staying on Dragonstone with Papa, Laena at Driftmark with you, and I'll be between both and court. It's no different than it's always been!"

"Aye," Corlys agrees, tugging her close and nosing a kiss to her hairline, above her circlet. "Mayhap. But we've never had to share them with anyone but each other before."

* * *

Laena's gown is pale silver-white samite, paler even than her hair, and it is strange to see her so elegantly attired - she is her father's daughter, and her mother's too, more at home at sea or in the air than at court. She looks more beautiful even than usual, and Rhaenys can feel her eyes overflowing once more.

"Oh, Mother," Laena sighs, brusque and fond at once. "Come now, it isn't a day for such silliness. Come, cheer yourself - think of it as gaining two children, instead of losing Laenor and me."

Gonsalo Mopatis is not the sort of son Rhaenys wants, with his tittering laughter and his eyes that see too much, no more than Alicent Hightower is the sort of daughter she might have asked for, but such is the price they must pay. Laena will have a foreign husband as reward for the return of Rhaenys' father, and Laenor will have a Reacher wife to quell the murmurs of discontent after the Arryn matches and Daemon's westward dash.

If Rhaenys had her way, they would marry for love, as she did, as her father did before her - but no. If she is to inherit the throne, she must think as a Queen, and the Queen-to-be in her had to barter away her children's futures for the sake of the realm.

Grandfather's death seems closer at hand by the day, which makes it more important than ever that she act the Queen. Papa never fully recovered from his time away, after all, and many burdens will fall on Rhaenys' shoulders.

"I am being silly, aren't I?" she says, taking Laena's face in her hands. "I am only so happy to see you looking so lovely, sweetling. You have your cloak?"

"Yes, Mother," she sighs. "You'd best check on Laenor, though - he is more likely to be lost this morning than I am."

"Your father is with your brother, Laena, and you must make do with me."

Laena has Grandfather's nose, and she looks down it from her height atop the dressing stool.

"It is hardly making do, Mama," she says, and smiles. "I assumed you would be with Laenor, though, and Papa with me."

"Your papa does not understand a bride's nerves," Rhaenys says. "No more than I understand those of a bridegroom."

She certainly does not understand the very particular nerves a young man such as Laenor must be enduring, and as such is glad that her lady mother whispered that mayhap it would be good to invite Uncle Vaegon from the Citadel. Papa had seemed surprised, but Mother had whispered to him as well, and then he had understood.

Would that these things were so easy for everyone as they were for Mother and Papa, or Rhaenys and Corlys! At least Laena has spent the past two weeks eyeing her betrothed as though she would like to devour him whole, but Laenor… She only hopes that Alicent Hightower is understanding.

That the girl is clever, Rhaenys has no doubt. But there is a gulf between intelligence and kindness, and she has been praying as hard as she knows how that Alicent is as rich in kindness as her father is in gold.

"Gonsalo doesn't really seem to understand about the cloaks," Laena says, drawing Rhaenys back to the day at hand. "I think it's just as well - I've tried explaining it, but at least this way he won't resent taking my name as an Andal would."

Laena gestures across the room, to the dressmaker's dummy behind the door. Rhaenys had not even noticed it, but there it is, bedecked in the heavy turquoise silk and cloth-of-silver of the Velaryon cloak she will drape around Gonsalo Mopatis' broad shoulders in just a few hours.

"Maybe so, sweetling," Rhaenys says, thinking of how very smart the Mopatises have been since Papa's return, and wondering if this cluelessness is not, in fact, a very smart move. "Maybe so."

* * *

Laenor looks very, very much like his father.

"Oh, my boy," Rhaenys says, taking his face in his hands as before she took Laena's. "A prince indeed."

His circlet is the same style as her own, entwined bands beaten flat, hers in silver and gold and his in plain silver. Laena's is plainer, a single smooth band of silver with a small white stone on the brow, but Laenor's is more regal, Rhaenys thinks.

"I hope to do you proud, Mama," Laenor says, taking her hands and kissing them, first one and then the other. "You and Grandfather and Great-Grandfather all, so that none of you may doubt me coming after you."

"I have never doubted you, sweet boy," Rhaenys assures him. "And now, the realm will see that I have been right all along."

"You have too much faith in me," Laenor says, rueful and shy as he always has been. He is steadier now than when he was a boy, but still soft - Rhaenys hopes he never fully grows out of it. "I only hope Lady Alicent approves as much."

"How can she not, brother?" Laena asks, arriving on Corlys' arm. "What woman would not be thrilled with the man who will be king?"

Laenor leans down and kisses Laena's cheek, and they murmur together for a moment - a moment Corlys takes to come across to Rhaenys.

"I thought we'd agreed no more tears," he scolds with a smile. "Look at you - you're going to spend the day weeping, aren't you?"

"Probably," she admits, folding herself into his embrace. "I'm just so proud of them."

"We can hear you, Mother," Laena sighs, long-suffering but pleased.

* * *

The sept is all flowers - red flowers, for the most part, bright as Meleys but twice as sweet - and Laenor looks so handsome, lit by candles and framed by roses.

Gonsalo Mopatis is handsome enough as well, she supposes, wearing a bright ruby in his tooth where his father wears an emerald, with clear golden-bright eyes and artfully careless hair. Rhaenys does not like him, but Laena seems to get along well with him. That will do for now.

Rhaenys is standing at the front of the crowd, to the right. They are all arrayed in order, Grandfather and Grandmother, Papa and Mama, Rhaenys and a space for Corlys. To the left, the Hightowers are taking precedence - a battle hard fought, and won only when Grandmother brokered a peace and pointed out that as wife to the heir's heir's heir, Alicent would take precedence over Gonsalo, and so the Hightowers came first.

The High Septon had been thrilled. He has been thrilled this year or more, since Laenor and Lady Alicent's betrothal was made official and public, and even his joy does not make him a more likeable man.

Grandfather wavers, and Aunt Alyssa touches his shoulder and guides him down into the pew. He has gotten frail these past months, frailer even than he was when first sweet Alicent was sent by her holy uncle to nurse him, and Grandmother too has gotten frail - she just won't admit to it.

They are old. They are nearly to their end, for all Rhaenys sometimes wishes they might go on forever. She is glad that they are here today, to see this.

Corlys leads Laena in first, with their matching chins and their matching eyes and their matching cool reserves. Corlys' beard always shines pure white when it's freshly trimmed, and whatever oil the maids used in Laena's hair has the same effect. Rhaenys is always proud of her family, but she is doubly so today.

No matter how much gold the Hightowers pour into Alicent, she will never be as lovely as Laena, as proud and regal.

Rhaenys is proven right a moment later, for here is Alicent, with her fair hair and her delicate features, with her too-intricate gown and her too-braided hair, and she is no match for Laena. Even so, she is the one the crowd oohs and aahs over, knowing that to curry favour with their future queen is the more sensible choice.

Grandmother sits as well. Soon, Papa will ease himself down for the sake of his ever-aching knees, and Rhaenys will remain standing so that one link in the chain does not seem on the verge of snapping.

Corlys lays Laena's hand in Gonsalo Mopatis', unsmiling, and takes his place at Rhaenys' side.

Otto Hightower has probably never smiled so hard in his life as he does while laying Alicent's hand in Laenor's.

* * *

"Have you told her yet, my love?"

Jocelyn's hair has not silvered at all beyond those bright wings at her temples, but Aemon's own has faded from bright silver to the white of an old man.

An old, sick man.

"Not today, Jocelyn," he says. "Not now. Not yet."

His father is dying - has only lasted this long, Aemon thinks, by sheer desire to see Rhaenys' children wed - and his mother will not be far behind him. But they are old, have lived long and lived well, and Aemon feels cheated that he is failing near as fast as they are.

His back. His knees. His heart, too, seems never to have entirely recovered from all his time away, no matter Petruchio's rescue and care, no matter the tenderness and coddling he's had from Jocelyn since his return home.

And now his lungs. Vaegon had looked grim when he saw the stains that no longer wash from Aemon's white handkerchiefs, the mucus thick with blood and pain.

"I will not ruin today for her," he says. "You know how hard she is taking it already - you know she feels that she is denying the children the chance for love as she has, as we do."

"She is soft," Jocelyn says. "Like you."

Rhaenys' softness is more permissible than Aemon's own, because she does not let it guide her actions. She sorrows for the children, that they cannot follow their hearts - not that Laenor could, not with his absolute need for children to stand as his heirs, with Baelon's boy and his Lannister girl on the Stepstones, with Saera's bastards claiming legitimacy for whatever false marriages she has indulged in on her adventures , with the persistent rumours around Laenor and the Lonmouth boy.

Aemon had more sympathy for Laenor's proclivities than he dared to say - had he not been tempted to seek comfort with his fellows belowdecks, stayed for a time only for the guilt that curdled in his gut at the thought of betraying Jocelyn? There had been no other woman, true, but there had been friends who offered companionship and comfort of a kind Aemon had never expected to find with other men.

His softness might have allowed Laenor to put off this day another while. Rhaenys' softness will offer comfort, but no leeway. She will be a better Queen than he will a King - but at least he will not rule for long.

"She is strong," he says, kissing each one of Jocelyn's sharp knuckles. "Like you."

Laenor is dancing with his new wife, with his shoulders set like Mother's, narrow and sloped in ease. The Hightower girl is pretty enough, clever rather than beautiful, and Aemon hopes she will be understanding.

Laena, though - well, there is understanding between her and her new man. Aemon just wishes it were a little less obvious. He still looks to Rhaenys' children and sees them as the little things they were when he returned from his time away.

"My love," Jocelyn says, kissing his shoulder. "You must speak with her. You know what Vaegon said. Rhaenys deserves to know the truth."

"The truth about what, Mama?"

Aemon near falls from his seat in surprise, but Rhaenys hardly seems to notice. Instead, she greets them each with a kiss on the cheek, leaning over the backs of their chairs with her circlet a little askew from the dancing.

"The truth about Laena's dancing, mayhap?" Rhaenys asks, casting a critical eye over the sultry way Laena presses up against Petruchio's boy. "Or the truth about why Uncle Vaegon has been squirrelling away in your chambers, Papa, every morning and every evening since he arrived from the Citadel?"

Aemon feels sick. He is sick, but that is not the point.

"Sweetling-"

"I am not a fool, Papa," Rhaenys says, "but I do not wish to cast a shadow over this day for either of the children - tomorrow. Corlys and I will break our fast with you and Mother, if we may, and you will tell me what is wrong. Yes?"

"Yes, darling girl," Jocelyn says, kissing Rhaenys' cheek. "I've tried reasoning with him, but-"

"You needn't tell me, Mama," Rhaenys assures her. "It was not all from you that I inherited my stubbornness."

She kisses each of them again, and then is away to dance with Corlys - it warms Aemon to see them so still in love, to know that Rhaenys, at least, will have a strong support to carry her through losing him a second time.

* * *

"Now, my love," Rhaenys says, smoothing Laena's hair over one last time before her dressing mirror. "No doubt you've preempted your vows-"

"Mother!"

"- but even so, it may be different now you are wed. If you are blessed, he will be as kind and generous as your father was and is to me. If he is not, here."

This was Corlys' idea, but Rhaenys is glad to deliver the pretty knife to Laena's hand nonetheless.

"Remember that you are my daughter," she says. "And he is only a cheesemonger's son."

"You worry overmuch, Mama," Laena chides her. "You would do well to remember that I am the finest swordswoman in the realm, after yourself, and he is not even renowned in Pentos, where they are no warriors to compare to us."

"Aye," Rhaenys agrees. "But you'll have no sword tucked into your smalls this night, my dearest girl, and I would give you the best shield I can."

"Go to Laenor, Mama," Laena says, turning to face her. "I know what I'm about - he needs you more than I do."

"No doubt," Rhaenys says. "But let me fuss a moment longer."

Laena wraps her arms tight around Rhaenys' waist, and Rhaenys wraps her arms tight over Laena's shoulders.

"Oh, sweet girl," Rhaenys sighs. "My lovely, brilliant girl."

* * *

Corlys is waiting outside when she emerges, smiling a little and looking as heartbroken as she feels.

"Young Joffrey is with Laenor," he says. "They're going to speak to Lady Alicent. See if they can manage some kind of arrangement, I think."

"When did they stop being our little hellions, love?"

"Oh, a few years ago, I'm afraid. You've just been too busy denying that they'd grown to admit it."

"Come here, you," she says, pulling him close and burrowing against his chest. "Are we old now, Corlys?"

"I've been old for ages. You're just too in love to say a word."

"Be serious."

"Never."

She kisses him.

"Take me to bed," she says. "I'm old and tired, and I'm weepy from all the wine and revelations."

"Aye, I imagine you are. Come on, dearheart - come, let's rest. And maybe if we rest a little, we might find another means of distracting you."

"You're revolting, you dirty old man."

"I thought you hadn't realised I was old!"

She waits until they're safely in their bedchamber to sigh again.

"Laenor will be alright, won't he?"

"Laenor," Corlys says, "is much more capable than anyone has given him credit for being, since old Barth died."

* * *

"The children are fine," Corlys soothes, "but your parents are waiting, and you've been fretful over your father for the past week or more. Come, love, let's meet them-"

"Is that screaming? Do you hear that?"

Rhaenys runs. She and Meleys had a bad landing while fighting pirates off Shipbreaker Bay three years ago and her hip has pained her ever since, but she runs now as easily as she did when she was seventeen and the guards told her Papa was home.

Mother is screaming. There are only two things that would make Mama scream - assassins in her bedchamber, or… Or…

"Aemon! Aemon! No! No, Aemon! Please, gods, Aemon!"

Or Papa's death.

Rhaenys screams too. She doesn't know what else to do.

* * *

She leaves Corlys and Laena with Mama, one to guard and the other to comfort, and she takes Laenor with her to her grandparents' rooms.

Even now, after all their troubles, they share a solar. Even now, with Grandfather so frail he can hardly walk from bed to breakfast table, and Grandmother's hands so swollen and arthritic that Grandfather must butter her toast.

"I-"

Rhaenys clears her throat again, but words fail her. Yesterday she had cried herself dry, overjoyed to see the beginnings of happiness for her little loves, but today she thinks she might flood the Blackwater Rush.

"Your Graces," Laenor says, his voice tight but steady. "We have unfortunate news."

"Surely your fair new bride has not disappointed you already, lad?" Grandfather says, and for the first time Rhaenys is glad of his rheumy eyes, that he cannot see how swollen and red her face is.

"No, Grandfather," she says, coming forward to kneel at his feet and take his hands. "Oh, my lord, I- it is Papa, Grandfather. Papa has- did you know that he was ill? I knew, but not so ill as this."

Grandmother's tea spills across the table.

"No," Grandfather says. "No, sweetling, you must be wrong."

"Corlys and I were to dine with him and Mama this morning, Grandfather, but when we got there, Mama-"

"No!" Grandfather shouts. "You are wrong, Rhaenys! You are wrong!"

"Jaehaerys," Grandmother says. "Stop it, Rhaenys is not-"

"No!" he snaps. "Not my boy. Not- not my boy."

"His lungs have been failing for months now," Grandmother says. "Jocelyn told me, but Aemon wouldn't let her tell anyone else. We should go to them, my love. Please?"

This will kill him, Rhaenys realises. Grandfather has mistaken little Alicent for Aunt Saera half a hundred times, has thought Rhaenys is his mother even more, and had called Papa Father more than once. His mind is going, gone, but this may well be the very last weight it can bear.

"Here, sire," Laenor says, bringing forth Grandfather's wheeled chair. "Here, let me help you."

"He isn't dead, " Grandfather insists. "He can't be - Jocelyn has always been excitable, it cannot… It must be a lie. A trick."

Rhaenys helps Grandmother to her feet, wishing that she had someone to support her . The sooner they all get to Mama and- and Papa the better. Then she will have Corlys.

* * *

Grandmother goes straight to Mama-

"Aly, Aly I can't wake him, Aly please there must be something-"

\- but Grandfather simply wails, all his heart leaving him in one terrible moment.

Corlys gathers Rhaenys close, just as he had in such different circumstances last night. Alicent is with Laenor, her hands tucked around his elbow, and Gonsalo is rocking Laena gently as she weeps.

Rhaenys cannot weep for the moment. Mayhaps later, when Mama is not howling and Grandmother is not sobbing and Grandfather has stopped making that terrible noise. For now, she rubs her face into Corlys' chest for a moment, and then she braces her shoulders.

"I must tell everyone," she says. "I must- announce it."

Uncle Vaegon comes, and presses his fingers to Papa's pulse, and listens for his breathing, and lifts his eyelids.

"I'm so sorry, Jocelyn," he says, touching Mama's hand with the barest brush of his fingertips. "I thought he had longer, but sometimes the body finds its ease sooner than we expect."

He cups Rhaenys' face in her hands, and it is almost unbearable - he is so like Papa.

"Be brave, little princess," he tells her. "I fear we have more ahead of us than we know."

He looks back to Grandfather, his pale lavender eyes bright with tears, and kisses Rhaenys' brow.

"Be brave," he says again. "We are all with you, child."

* * *

There are already rumours, so all of court - so busy, with the weddings! Why, she has not even had a chance to properly speak to Aemma, to ask how negotiations for little Rhaenyra's hand have gone with the Starks! - gathers quickly in the shadow of the Iron Throne.

Rhaenys stands at its foot, with Laenor at her right hand. She has stood so with Papa so many times before that she thinks she may be sick.

"My father," she says, voice as steady as she can make it. "Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone is- he is dead."

A murmur ripples through the crowd, and Laenor presses his hand to her shoulder.

"He died in his sleep during the night," Rhaenys goes on, "with my lady mother in his arms. He would not have wished to die any other way."

Aemma and Viserys are to the front of the crowd, with Rhaenyra and Alyn and Jasper and Rowena all gathered around them - all their children have Aemma's thick, dark hair - and Uncle Vaegon comes to join them with Aunt Alyssa on his arm.

"We ask you to understand that, given the circumstances, the festivities for my children's weddings must be cut short. I will speak with you again as soon as we have arranged for my father's funeral."

She steps down from the dais, into Aemma's strong, waiting embrace, and weeps. Aemma has been as her little sister all these years, and she has been Rhaenys' safe harbour, too, when she has needed comfort Corlys could not offer. Never before has that been so true, that comfort so necessary.

"Oh, Rhaenys," Aemma sighs, kissing her hair. "Oh, I am so, so sorry."

* * *

Aunt Daella and Lord Arryn work with Aunt Alyssa to control the crowds, and Rhaenys' new goodchildren prove their worth, too - Alicent in particular has a knack for shutting people up when they ask too many questions.

Rhaenys can hardly breathe, but she is Princess of Dragonstone now, and with Grandfather and Grandmother both invalided, and Mama losing her mind to grief, it falls to Rhaenys to organise Papa's funeral.

Here, too, Aunt Alyssa comes forward.

"I've done this before, sweetling," she says, and there is something of the softness Rhaenys remembers from so very long ago, before Papa went away, in her aunt's face now. "Let me help - please."

So she does. She even writes to Daemon, away fighting some war somewhere in the Disputed Lands, offering dragonfire in return for trade, and receives a lengthy letter from Jocasta, delivered by the second of her three fine sons.

"Father will be here as soon as Caraxes may bear him hence, cousin," golden-haired Aeron says, stepping down onto the dock. "I am so sorry - Uncle Aemon was ever kind and welcoming to us when we visited Dragonstone."

Rhaenys kisses her little cousin on both cheeks, but entrusts him to Laenor's care - she can hardly stand to speak now that the funeral is drawing near, and still has not gone to sit with Papa, where he lies in state in the sept.

* * *

"So you are heir to the throne once again, little love."

Mama has aged a decade in a week, with her dark hair all a-tangle around her pale, pale face.

"A weight I do not wish to bear," Rhaenys says, "for there is no chance he might return to us this time."

Mama draws her near. Rhaenys goes, and holds on tight. It is the first time she has been able to catch her breath in days.

"You must be brave, my darling," Mama whispers. "Your papa loved you more than anything in the world, and he was so proud of you. You must be brave."

Rhaenys has always been bold and wilful and a little brash, but perhaps that is different than being brave - it must be, for everyone keeps telling her to be brave.

"My bright, brilliant girl," Mama says, as though Rhaenys is not forty years old with two married children of her own. "My poor, brave girl."

They weep together, and then they go to the sept. Papa's hair looks silver by the candlelight, not white, and the deep shadows under his eyes look less haunted with his eyes closed.

"How well he looks," Mama says, and then the sobs take her again.

* * *

"He saw the children wed," Corlys says. "And he was almost prouder of them than of you - I think he must be at rest, love."

The fire is still burning, but there is nothing to be seen of her father anymore. Just smoke, acrid and stinging, and still she cannot look away.

"I miss him," she says, stunned by how much the simple words ache. "Does it stop? Does it ease?"

Corlys was six-and-ten when his father died, nine-and-ten when he lost his mother, and even to the children he rarely speaks of them.

"It eases," he says. "But not quickly, and I fear you will not have the luxury of time, Rhaenys."

Grandfather, in his wheeled chair with his rheumy eyes, looks mostly dead already.

"Then I must be ready," Rhaenys says. "I must be brave."

And still her heart is breaking - how had she never considered this cost, when she fought so hard all those years ago for Dragonstone? What a child she had been.


End file.
